Mark Webber has dismissed speculation that he tried to help his Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel during the Monaco Grand Prix.

While Webber had been leading the race, a long first stint on soft tyres left Vettel out in front after the leading group had pitted. With Webber's pace remaining slower than that of his team-mate there were rumours that he was attempting to hold up the cars behind to allow Vettel to gain positions, but writing in his BBC column Webber called the idea "rubbish".

"I heard afterwards people had been speculating that I was 'backing up' Nico (Rosberg), Fernando (Alonso) and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, who was also behind me, to help my team-mate Sebastian Vettel gain places," Webber said. "That is absolute rubbish. You just cannot be that fancy around Monaco.

"Ultimately, Seb ran out of tyres and he had to pit because the rest of us started to go quicker, but if they'd kept going he would have been pushing for the win. If we had been trying anything on, I could have been even cuter. I cleared Seb by quite a lot. If I'd wanted to slide him in among other people, I could have slowed down and it would have been even better for the team. But it just wasn't part of the plan.

"The problem with trying to do that would be that you're exposing yourself to even more pressure from the guys behind - Nico and Fernando in this case. And then the boys in the pits might mess up Seb's stop and it would all be for nothing. You always get bitten on the bum when you get fancy. So you just don't try."